{"id":7043,"date":"2019-04-19T19:42:53","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T23:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/?p=7043"},"modified":"2019-04-20T12:48:47","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T16:48:47","slug":"wasted-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/?p=7043","title":{"rendered":"Wasted Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted;
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain. <\/p>Evangeline – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

My mom has vascular dementia, she often doesn’t know what day it is and can’t complete thoughts or sentences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But her intellect remains formidable. We were talking the other day and she asked, apropos of nothing, “What do you know about Evangeline? Do you know why Longfellow wrote it?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had to admit the only reason I knew about Evangeline was because James Lee Burke frequently mentions her in his Dave Robicheaux crime fiction stories. [1]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that conversation I stopped at the Peabody library in Columbia City [2]<\/a> and checked out a Longfellow collection. I plowed through the dense, almost impenetrable to me, 19th century text and came across the gem that I quoted at the start of this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve been talking a lot about fountains these days. Son Josh has done a jaw-dropping amount of genealogical research<\/a> and relevant to this post our family name [3]<\/a> can be rendered as “to the fountain.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The words of a long dead poet, dredged up who knows why by the tangled synapses of my mom’s mind, through a good public library, to my son’s genealogical research. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These things flow by and through me. I’m a baffled conduit of wonder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/div>\n

1.<\/a> I didn’t admit that I thought Wordsworth wrote Evangeline. One of my great regrets in life was that I pursued a technical rather than a liberal arts education.<\/p>\n

2.<\/a> Public libraries are a treasure. I’m filled with hope every time after I visit one.<\/p>\n

3.<\/a> Zumbrun. Are you paying attention?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted;If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returningBack to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain. Evangeline […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}